Spare Space Garden is a home for people who want to grow things but don't have a garden. Balconies, rooftops, patios, front steps, windowsills — if you have a few square metres and some light, you have enough room to grow food, herbs and flowers.

Why this site exists

Most gardening advice assumes you have a backyard with deep soil. In a pot, almost everything works differently: roots run out of room, soil dries out in hours on a hot day, nutrients wash away, and wind on a fifth-floor balcony can snap a tomato plant in half.

We started Spare Space Garden to gather research-backed advice for exactly those conditions and present it in a specific, practical way, including the common reasons container plants struggle.

What you'll find here

  • Container vegetables — crop-by-crop guides with pot sizes, varieties and care routines.
  • Balcony & rooftop setup — sunlight, wind, weight, watering and layout.
  • Herbs & microgreens — the easiest wins for windowsills and kitchens.
  • Soil, compost & fertilizer — getting the growing medium right.
  • Pests & plant problems — diagnosing what's wrong and fixing it gently.

How we research and write our guides

We want to be upfront about how our guides are made.

  • Research from trusted sources. Every guide is built from university extension services (such as the cooperative extension programs of US land-grant universities), botanical gardens, horticultural societies and seed companies' growing data. We link to the sources we rely on, so you can check them yourself.
  • Written for containers. Most published advice assumes a garden bed. We pull out what changes in a pot, a grow bag or on a windy balcony — pot sizes, watering, feeding and placement — and say so clearly when advice differs.
  • Our own charts and illustrations. The diagrams, pot-size charts and checklists on this site are drawn by us to make the key numbers easy to use. We don't pass off stock or AI-generated photos as our own gardens.
  • Kept up to date. When sources change, or a reader points out a mistake, we update the guide and show the "Updated" date.
  • No paid placements. Nobody pays us to recommend a product or method in our articles.

Gardening results always depend on your climate, the variety you grow and your conditions, so treat our numbers as a starting point and adjust to what your plants tell you.

Get in touch

Have a question about your own plants, spotted an error, or want to share what worked for you? We'd love to hear from you — use our contact page or email hello@sparespacegarden.com.